The first royal I was ever drawn to was not British at all. She was Austrian. On my early trips to Vienna I kept circling back to Empress Elisabeth, the one everyone …

For a long time I thought the Renaissance was an Italian story, and mostly a Florentine one. Botticelli, Michelangelo, the great dome over Florence Cathedral. It was only once I began visiting …

I had heard the name for years. Whenever something big was happening in London, a royal wedding, a jubilee, a state funeral, the cameras always seemed to be pointing down the same …

Walk into the medieval and early Renaissance rooms at the National Gallery in London and the walls turn to gold. Almost every panel is religious: a Virgin and Child, a saint, a …

I came to St James’s Park the way most people do, straight from Buckingham Palace, with an hour to spare and no real plan. I have done it a few times now, …

In my last post on the National Gallery I followed the Early Renaissance in Florence, and ended with three quiet workshop masters: Verrocchio, who trained Leonardo, Ghirlandaio, who trained Michelangelo, and Fra …